SSP Research, Policy & Media Unit
Press Release: 26/01/06

Labour joins with Tories & Lib Dems to vote down free prescriptions

Labour MSP’s from constituencies with some of the worst health records in the UK yesterday joined forces with Tories and Liberal Democrats to vote down a Scottish Socialist Party bill to abolish Scottish NHS prescription charges in a debate in the Scottish Parliament.
The Parliament voted 77 votes to 44 against accepting the basic principles of the bill, despite the fact that the Parliament’s Health Committee recommending that they be agreed.
The Abolition of NHS Prescription Charges (Scotland) Bill was supported by the SSP, Scottish National Party, Greens and independents.
One Labour MSP, Elaine Smith, voted in favour of the bill.
The Scottish Executive had been forced to announce a series of last minute concessions extending prescription charges exemptions after the huge support mobilised behind the campaign to abolish NHS prescription charges through the bill that had been lodged by SSP national convenor Colin Fox.

Colin today singled out the Labour MSP’s who represent areas of Scotland with chronic poverty and health problems and their role in attacking the very core principles of the NHS; that it should be free at the point of need.

Colin said;
“So now we know, Labour MSP’s are happy for their constituents to continue to be taxed for being sick.
“During the debate we had the incredible sight of Labour MSP’s representing constituencies with some of the worst health records in the UK, and indeed in Europe, dismissing the core principle of the NHS, that it should be free at the point of need, as “fantasy politics”.
“The Labour Party of Aneurin Bevan has now been completely destroyed by careerists and charlatans who follow the politics of Thatcherism and not socialism.
“Labour MSP Frank McAveety represents Glasgow Shettleston in some areas of which life expectancy for men is 53.9 years, 10 years less than that of India, and yet he was at the front of Labour attacks on the principle of a free health service.
“The reality is that the Queen gets free prescriptions while people on disability living allowance do not. Some 30 members of this Parliament get free prescriptions but people on incapacity benefit do not. J K Rowling, as a new mum, gets free prescriptions, but a low-paid woman worker in the Scottish Parliament must pay in full.
“Irrespective of the vote, we have won the argument; support in the country for the abolition of this despised tax on the sick is absolutely overwhelming.”
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